Last Friday We had Teaching Resource Center (TRC), and it was an absolute blast! We got to meet members who spoke Swedish and talk to them for 20 minutes and give them a spiritual thought, in Swedish. It was awesome, we even got to do it twice! It's amazing how we prepped one thought and then followed the Spirit, because the two discussions went completely differently. Friday I also finally got the mission shirt I ordered that says Sweden Stockholm Mission 2016 - 2018 with a map of Sweden in the flag colors. Although they originally gave me the wrong one. I opened it up at first and noticed the country shape was wrong. And the colors. And the fact that it said Costa Rica. They mixed my shirt up but they found after 10 or 15 minutes. My shirt had accidentally been swapped. Me and my companion were laughing though, we joked that I almost got sent to Costa Rica instead of Sweden.
Saturday was really cool. Sister Pickett has been sick for awhile and Saturday she had absolutely no voice. Elder Beveridge and I got to give her a blessing. It's amazing how the Priesthood really is the power of God. When you give blessings, you end up telling people what they needed to hear, even when you had absolutely no idea what that was! This led to my study of the Priesthood during my personal study. I started off in Doctrine and Covenants section 20 reading about the roles of the priesthood, but I ended up studying Melchizedek and why he was the one to have the priesthood called after him. It was really interesting and I highly recommend you study it.
Sunday was also an interesting day. It was the older Finns last day. We were sad to see these friends we made leave, but we were excited and they were excited that they were finally leaving for the mission field. But, with the Finns leaving, we were also losing our zone leaders, which leads me to something else cool. Elder Beveridge and I are the new Zone Leaders! We now are in charge of taking care of our zone which consists of our district and the new Finnish District. We have a phone, but it's essentially a brick because it's a flip phone and password protected so we can't do anything but receive phone calls and call the information desk. But it's cool.
Monday morning we saw the old Finns off. It feels weird that was only this week. Unfortunately, unlike the other Swedes we won't see them in the mission field. Monday our phone also kept buzzing a lot. The new Finns had to fly out to the embassy in California for their visas on Tuesday so we had to send them down to the travel office to verify some info. Monday was quiet with only one set of Finns left, and Tuesday felt like a temporary Ghost town while the others had their day trip. Our zone went from taking 6 rooms when we came to now only 3.
Tuesday was also our Devotional. We heard from Brent H. Neilson, who is a general seventy and the head of the Mission Department. He gave an awesome talk about how people always say that "Oh it was better in ___ time". He assured us that this is the best time to live and that these are our days, particularly as missionaries. The church has never grown faster, had higher membership, had more temples, or reached as far across the world as it does now. He also showed us the video from the Peter Whitmer farm of the growth of the church. That video is only supposed to be shown at the farm, but he begged and received permission to show it here at the MTC this one time. It was awesome! I feel like a lot of the missionaries were really excited after that talk. He also told us what Thomas S Monson always tells the General Authorities.
1: "He who the Lord calls, the Lord qualifies"
2: "Whenever you are on the Lord's errand you are entitled to His Help"
Wednesday was relatively normal, the MTC didn't get any new missionaries because of Thanksgiving, and our zone won't get any until after my district leaves.
Yesterday was Thanksgiving and it was amazing. We started with a morning devotional from Neil L Anderson. I sang in the choir and we sang Mack Wilberg's arrangement of 'Come thou Fount' to start the meeting. I loved it! Elder Anderson then gave a wonderful talk on how much we have to be thankful for. God has given us literally everything, including our bodies and the ability to breathe and walk. So nothing is really ours in this life, and we have so much to be thankful for. He also told us to be thankful for our trials, as they help us grow and can be a blessing in the long run. I believe he quoted 2 Nephi as he talked about how the Lord would consecrate our trials to our gain. This was a great reminder to me that when we have struggles in life that there must be blessings in plenty in store down the road.
Elder Anderson also brought a friend who quoted the title of one of Elder Anderson's talks "It’s True, Isn’t It? Then What Else Matters?". If we have faith in God and that He is real, then what else matters. Our afflictions become meaningless when we know that we are driven by truth. We also had a wonderful zone review after the devotional. The Spirit was strong as we testified of what we thought and felt during the devotional. We then had lunch, which was our Thanksgiving meal.
We then had another devotional about the service and the Church. We got to see the video for the Church's new 'Light the World' service initiative a day early as it actually was launched today. My district then watched the movie 'Ephraim's Rescue' about the people who went and saved the Martin Handcart Company. I loved it and it's testimony of faith and enduring through hard times. It's a great movie and I highly recommend it. We then had dinner and did a service project, bagging food for Feeding Children Everywhere, which is a company much like Feed My Starving Children but works mostly with children in the US. We then had a musical Thanksgiving tribute with a lot of different musical contributions from various groups in the MTC. One was even one of those western/cowboy style bands with two string basses, two violins, several guitars, and even a mandolin and banjo! At the end they let us walk outside and they finally turned on the Christmas lights everywhere! It was great, we have been waiting for the last week for them to finally turn them on at night.
I am sorry this email was so long but so much has happened this week, especially with P-day being pushed back and Thanksgiving. I am so grateful to be here at the MTC and to have this opportunity to serve the Lord after He has given me so much. Every time we try to obey Him and make up for all the blessings he has given us, He simply blesses us more.
I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!
-Elder Ashford
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| Provo Temple |
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| Provo Temple |
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| This is something that Swedish Elder going to Finland showed us, it's 9 different words that all sound virtually the same but mean completely different things. |
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| Elder Beveridge and I rocking our hairnets after our service project. |
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